In Ramona, water connections have been restored for some essential services. But residents there are starting a second day without running water. They returned from shelters to find their supplies shut off. The Witch Fire ignited near Ramona and ravaged parts of the town. Tamara Keith reports on the rocky return home.
Diane Sheppard walks her charred property with a sort of hyper kinetic energy. It's the energy of a person overwhelmed with loss, with too much to do to reach any semblance of routine. She wears plastic open toed slippers, shorts and a t-shirt. It's what she was wearing on Sunday when she fled her home. Her house is gone, in the driveway are just the remnants of what used to be her cars and trailer, strangely a few of her plants are still green.
Sheppard: I've got to go bet boots or shoes or something before I do anything else, but in the meantime I am just watering. Some of them will make it, some of them won't.
She sprinkles the plants with buckets of old dirty water she found on her property. Fresh water is harder to come by. The pump attached to her well isn't working. The only building left is a drafty barn.
Sheppard: No I'm not going to give up. Even if I have to spend all winter here. We could always inside get insulation and insulate this more, and get a porta potty or something. We've got to do something because I'm not leaving.
Even those whose homes were unscathed, don't have any running water. Firefighting efforts depleted Ramona's water supplies…at the same time a power failure halted the pumps that replenish that supply. So, as residents returned, Ramona water agency staff shut off service to 10-thousand customers, to allow the system to re-pressurize. It will be at least another 2 days before everyone has water. So, in the meantime…
Hoff: We have 350 portable restrooms, 35 handicapped and a bunch of handwashing stations.
Ron Hoff is with Spankies Portable Services, one of southern California's largest portable restroom suppliers. He's pulling a trailer load of porta potties into a field at the Ramona community park.
Hoff: Well it's just for the residents because they don't have running water, an no sewer and septic so they're free to come down here and use the facilities and pick up the food and water while they're here.
Robinson: Cars, keep on moving. Pull all the way forward.
Yesterday residents in cars and SUVs lined up on a dusty field to get cases of water to tide them over. Ramona resident Jody Robinson volunteered to direct traffic.
Robinson: There is no water except bottles, and that's what you've got here, yes, lot's of it.
When asked if her town was beginning to return to normal, Robinson's cheery demeanor changed.
Robinson: It's not, it's not. Not at all. It's a nightmare. It is it is.
For Norma Tucker, a nightmare that involved being evacuated twice, ended when she was able to return home. Though there were complications.
Tucker: First thing I started to do was go to the bathroom and I thought, I can't use the bathroom there's no water, so we came down here to use the potty.
Here is the Ramona community center, a senior center where Tucker and her neighbors are eating a warm lunch made by volunteers. The Red Coss and other agencies are setting up shop in Ramona, and plan to stay as long as residents need their help.
For KPBS, I'm Tamara Keith.
